


Parasite

by aparticularbandit



Series: Roisa Fic Week 2k19 [3]
Category: Jane the Virgin (TV)
Genre: F/F, abortion tw, it's discussed in the first part, just don't read it, so if it's squicky to you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 02:53:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20146414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aparticularbandit/pseuds/aparticularbandit
Summary: Rose and Luisa discuss kids over the course of their relationship.Fulfillment of Pregnancy AU Prompt for Roisa Fic Week 2k19.





	Parasite

“I need an abortion.”

Luisa freezes in place, sitting on her little doctor’s stool, and tries not to parse through the information, pretends that maybe, just maybe, _just this one_, she heard Rose incorrectly. It isn’t likely – the redhead has a habit of making sure whatever she says is just loud enough for it to be heard by the people she wants to hear it. Even when she is angry, she speaks in a fevered _hush_ instead of the booming echoes of her father, who, to be quite honest, Luisa does _not_ want to think about right now.

But she asks anyway, hopes that she has somehow heard her wrong this time. “You _what_ now?”

“I need. an abortion.”

Luisa takes a deep breath and holds up one hand, palm out, to keep her stepmother from continuing, even though she’s certain Rose doesn’t have anything more to say. When it’s business, she’s all business, and that’s the tone she has now. Blame the lawyer in her. She’s said what she needs to say, and now Luisa just has to…parse through it.

She slips from the stool, hands clenching and unclenching on either side of her as she paces back in forth in the _not entirely tiny_ clinic room. It’s bigger than she’d hoped for, after the last time she’d been put on probation, and this clinic in particular has been nothing but good to her since she came, allowing for moments like this – when family members come in to check in on her. Mostly Rose – it’s the _lawyer_ and _probation_ bits combined together – the family wanted one of their team of lawyers to take care of it, the prosecution wanted someone else, and Rose, despite being family, had a track record of….

Well, whatever it is that lawyers do, she’d been very good at it. Once. Mostly they’d used the time for other purposes. But it’s been a long time since then.

It takes a moment before Luisa says, finally, her voice quiet through her paused pacing, “Weren’t you using that birth control I got you?”

Rose crosses one long leg over the other, and the cheap paper with which they cover the patient’s leather chair makes a crinkling noise like the paper balls she used to make from old McDonald’s hamburger wrappers for <strike>Carla’s</strike> kitten to play with. “Those aren’t one hundred percent effective.”

“And he wasn’t—” Her voice chokes on the words before she forces herself to continue, “—he _was_ using protection, wasn’t he?”

“You know your father,” Rose says, bright blue eyes looking anywhere but at Luisa. Right now, they are focused on one of the pregnancy posters splattered on the wall, the different changes in the fetus as it grows through the months. Maybe she’s examining it or reading it. Maybe she’s unsure of her choice.

Luisa knows better, though. Rose wouldn’t be here if she hadn’t already made up her mind – and the thought of her newest words sense a shiver down her spine. “No, you know what, Rose, really, I _don’t_. I really don’t. And I _like_ not knowing, so if you could maybe _have this conversation with someone else_, that would be _great_.”

“Who else would I tell?” Rose’s gaze moves back to Luisa, eyes focusing their intense and quiet stare on her. Normally, this would make Luisa wither, but right now she’s too nauseated to be in _that_ sort of mood. “_You_ are my ob/gyn, so it would be _you_ who I would go to see. Wouldn’t it?”

“I’m your _stepdaughter_ and you are talking about _sex with my dad_ and do you _not_ understand how _awkward_ this is?”

“I understand.” But there’s nothing in Rose’s tone to remotely suggest that she does. Instead, the redhead crosses her arms, rubbing her exposed skin with one hand. “But I had to see you.”

Luisa rolled her bottom lip between her teeth and bit down so hard she could taste copper. “You don’t,” and here she moves to sit next to Rose, thinks better of it, and instead moves the stool just in front of her and sits down on it for purely medical reasons and distance and this is an acceptable place to be sitting, “you don’t even want to _consider_ possibly…_keeping_ it?”

“_I want this thing out of me._”

It’s the harshest Luisa has ever heard Rose speak, and it startles her. There’s venom in her tone, something bitter and biting. Rose’s jaw clenches, tight, maybe snapping back whatever she wants to continue to say due to Luisa’s reaction, although that’s never stopped her before. After a few moments, she shakes her head. “You don’t know what this feels like.”

“I know how many women have come to me begging for a child they aren’t able to have,” Luisa says, her hands clasping together. She doesn’t look up, doesn’t _want_ to look up. “I know _Petra_—”

“Adoption isn’t an option.” Rose’s eyes meet Luisa’s when she looks up at the comment. “If he knew, your father would want to keep it. You know that.”

“Which is why you’re having this conversation with _me_ and not with _him_.” Luisa’s lips press together again, and she leans back on the stool, unable to turn away from the other woman as much as she wants to do so. She needs to be objective here, to think of Rose as just another client, just another person. Maybe, if it were anyone else, she could. It’s not like she’s had trouble with this before.

But it’s Rose, and it’s _her father_, and her stomach churns with the thought of the whole thing.

“You need to find someone else,” Luisa says, finally, rubbing her forehead with one hand as she slips off of the stool again and heads for the door.

“Then give me a recommendation.”

Luisa pauses with her hand on the doorknob, the other stuffed into the pocket of her doctor’s coat, which is lined with cough drops and various hard candies, and she imagines the thought. She _lets_ herself imagine it. The door is just barely cracked open, and she shuts it, tight, turning back to face Rose once more.

And as much as she hates Rose in this moment, Luisa doesn’t want to send her anywhere else. She’s not afraid that the woman won’t come back. There are better medical doctors throughout the state, even nearby. She wasn’t chosen for her _skill_; she was chosen purely for other reasons. She knows that. She knows that on a normal visit – just as with the lawyerly check-ins – she would be giving anything other than pure medical attention.

Well. She _also_ does that.

But they have fun when Rose is here.

This is not a normal visit. This _can’t_ be a normal visit. Rose has brought weight into what should be weightless but never really is.

“I’m sure you can find someone else who will take care of you.”

Luisa’s voice is soft as she turns back. Her eyes focus on Rose’s belly, on what could but won’t swell with the potential child now gestating within it. She glances up to meet Rose’s bright eyes, briefly, and then glances back down. “I can’t, Rose. I’m too close to this. There’s a reason they don’t let parents operate on their—”

“I’m not your child, Luisa.”

“I didn’t say you were, it’s an analogy, it’s a _bad_ analogy because I can’t think of any _good_ ones right now, but I can’t, I can’t take this, this _thing_, this _whatever it is or could be_ because it’s not. I can’t separate what it currently _is_ from what it _could be_, and it could be a little brother or sister or, or, or _something_ and I can’t—” Luisa plants one hand on her counter. “I can’t help you with this. I can’t be impartial here.”

“You want me to keep it.”

And Rose’s lips purse with another clench of her jaw, muscle leaping beneath her skin.

Luisa’s eyes flick back up again, but they don’t meet Rose’s. Not because she doesn’t try, but because there is too much boiling in those liquid depths for her to hold their gaze. “I didn’t say that. Far be it from _me_ to tell _you_ what to do, but—”

“You want me to keep this _parasite_ in my stomach just because _you_ or _your father_ or _Petra_ want me to keep it.”

“I did _not_ say that.” Luisa’s eyes widened, her voice rising. “I said _I couldn’t be involved_. That’s an entirely different—” It’s then that she meets Rose’s eyes and sees her own fire reflected back at her. She looks away and takes a deep breath, holds it, and then lets it out to a count of ten in an attempt to steady herself. “You’ve already decided,” she says, eyes glancing up briefly, and notices that Rose’s face has softened, too. “I just,” she moves and finally sits next to Rose on the patient’s chair, taking both of her hands in both of her own and interlacing their fingers, “I can’t be the one to do this. Not with you. Not with whatever my dad,” and her stomach churns again, much more violently this time, “whatever he made in you. Even if you changed your mind, it would be hard, it would—”

How does she explain that _this is my dad, you did this with my dad, and every time I see that child I would have to think about that_ and maybe that’s the entire reason Rose is here and the entire point of it having to be _her_, because who else would have the strange mixture of love and hate for the potential child that she would have?

“I understand,” she continues, her voice growing softer, “but I can’t. And you shouldn’t…you shouldn’t ask me. You should _know_—”

But the words won’t come out. She can’t make them. She could make _a lot of other things_ come right now, but words? They just won’t. They’re logged in the back of her throat with everything she’s trying _not_ to think about.

“Luisa.” Rose cups her cheek with one hand and brushes her thumb across her cheek. It’s only on the second time that she realizes she’s crying. “I’m not doing this to hurt you.”

“I know.”

Luisa winces, though, at the words, at the implication.

Rose takes the wince as something else and removes her hand, turns away. “I’m married to him.”

“I know.”

“I can’t be married to him and not—”

“_I know._”

But Luisa doesn’t like having to think about it. Most of the time, she _doesn’t_. She likes being able to sweep all of it under the rug and forget that the Rose she loves is also the Rose who is married to her father. Honestly, it’s far easier than she’d ever thought it could be. Rose acts differently around her than she does around him, even though there are some things that are the same – the razor wit, the sharpness of her anger, the spiked barbs – there are so many that are _different_. Rose is soft with her. Maybe it’s because she, too, understands that Luisa can’t hold the weight of the world on her shoulders, no matter how hard she tries.

_And she tries so hard._

Luisa swallows once. Right now, there’s no way to separate her Rose from the one married to her father. They’re meshed together. Or maybe she’s dealing with her stepmother, finally, instead of her lover – the woman who belongs to her father and not to her.

“Please,” she whispers. “Please just go.”

Rose gives her hands a gentle squeeze, but she doesn’t say anything in reply. She stands, brushes the wrinkles from the edge of her white skirt, and takes her purse – the white one, with the gold pattern on the front, the one her father bought for her on their trip to Havana – then gives Luisa another, brief glance. For a moment, it feels like she will reach out again, will just touch her skin, but she seems to decide against it, closing the door behind her and leaving Luisa alone on the patient’s chair, head held in her hands.

* * *

“Have you ever thought about kids?”

Luisa shifts under their sheets and curls closer to Rose so that she can rest her head on her lover’s breast. Rose’s fingers begin to stroke through her dark hair, trace down her spine, and then move back. It’s a comforting, if not continuous, pattern.

“I was an ob/gyn, Rose. I thought about kids a lot.” Luisa smiles, amused with her own joke, even if she knows that’s not what Rose means. She looks up with a twinkle in her eyes. It feels _nice_ to be the one taking Rose’s words in another direction for once. She leans up just enough to press a kiss to the edge of her jaw.

The smile quickly fades, though, as she looks away and begins to trace circles on her love’s arm.

“No,” Rose says, her voice soft, “have you ever thought about _having_ kids?”

“Of my own?”

Luisa doesn’t look up again, just continues tracing circles on Rose’s arm. Sometimes she thinks she can connect her freckles if she tries hard enough or if she uses her nail instead of her thumb, leaving a tiny little red scratch mark behind. She could draw design like this. She _has_ drawn designs like this.

“Of course I have,” she says, finally. “Hasn’t everyone at one point or other?”

“And?”

This time when Rose asks, it’s with the faintest hint of frustration at the continued avoidance of the question. Even with her attempt at keeping her voice quiet and controlled, it still slips through. It doesn’t help that Rose does not like to use more words to continue a conversation when she doesn’t need to, that she enjoys their comfortable silences just as much as she does their conversation.

The palm branch fan overhead spins, a creak breaking through the silence every now and again.

“What is there to think?” Luisa asks. “I don’t have kids.”

“Did you want one?”

“No.”

Luisa doesn’t even think before the word is out of her mouth. It’s a question she’s asked herself many, _many_ times over the years, not with _Rose_, necessarily, because she remembers well where Rose stands – the word _parasite_ sticks out in her mind – but she’d thought about it plenty of times with Allison. Still, she’s always returned to that same answer. She’s always told herself that answer.

But it doesn’t seem to sit well with Rose, who shifts the slightest bit so that she can look at Luisa better. “You don’t?”

“No,” Luisa repeats, still not looking back up, the word much softer this time. “With my addiction, my hallucinations, my family history? No. I wouldn’t wish any of that on a kid.”

“You would be a good mother.” There’s that confusion in Rose’s voice, that complete lack of understanding, even with the logic Luisa has presented.

“I would be _the best_ mother,” Luisa says, and it’s both an affirmation and a correction, and she laughs a little bit at the admittance. “I wouldn’t want to pass on my genetics to a kid.” She brushes her hair back behind her ear and sits up, forcing herself to speak the words that she hasn’t said to anyone, hasn’t _needed_ to say to anyone because she hasn’t felt like they needed to know or even like they would particularly care if she told them. “When I got out of the mental hospital the first time – after Carla, after realizing I was turning into my mother – I….” And here she hesitates, the creaking of the fan breaking through her words.

“I can’t have kids anymore.”

The sentence hangs in the air between them as Luisa shrugs once, sits up, and leans against the headboard, one arm crossed across her stomach, hand clutching her other arm. “I can’t have kids anymore,” she repeats, as though saying it again would reinforce it and make her feel better, “even if I changed my mind.” She chuckles. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. I still think it was a good one. I—”

She swallows once. “I made it so that I couldn’t change my mind. I wanted to make sure. Certain. No one else has to suffer…_this_.” She waves one hand half-heartedly.

“You’re not so bad.”

“You don’t live in my head,” Luisa says. Her lips curve into her normal smile, although there’s no happiness to it. She turns to Rose, head tilted. “It’s not like _you_ want kids, so. What does it matter?”

Rose’s eyes narrow. “Who said I didn’t want kids?”

Luisa pauses with one hand in her hair, the other situating the sheets about her chest, and she turns, faces the other woman more fully. “_You_ did. You wanted _that thing_ taken _out of you_. I was there, Rose. I remember.”

“You should understand now why I wanted that.”

Luisa hasn’t really thought about it. In fact, she’s tried very hard to put that whole experience out of her head. She doesn’t _like_ to think about it, and having it brought up now, after what she just shared, burns. She shakes her head. “You didn’t love him.”

“No.”

“I always thought you didn’t want children at all.”

“At the time, I didn’t.” Rose’s lips press together in a thin line, their edges curved up in that way that Luisa knows is clearly amusement, held back laughter, although Luisa doesn’t know what about this situation is funny to her. “I’ve since reconsidered.” A pause, then, as her hand reaches over to just touch Luisa’s fingers. “But if you don’t want one….” Her voice fades away, leaving only the occasional creak of the palm fan overhead.

“I….”

Luisa doesn’t know what to say. She closes her eyes, shakes her head. “I hadn’t thought about it because I couldn’t have one and I didn’t think you wanted one and I don’t know. I can’t just—”

She _can_.

Unconsciously, her hand shifts to cover Rose’s bare stomach, and she feels her love’s muscles tense beneath touch like tightened stitching. “It could leave scars,” she says, eyes focusing on the other woman’s skin. “Stretch marks.”

“So?”

“It could leave _identifying_ marks.”

Luisa looks up and tries to meet Rose’s eyes, but instead her gaze is drawn to the star-shaped scar on her right bicep, where there had been no mark for so long. Another one that was, in some small part, her own fault. Something else that could identify Rose as _Rose_, if the police should be looking for her somewhere.

“Who would know?” Rose asks, eyes watching Luisa’s face.

“You. Me. Our daughter—”

“_Daughter_?” And here Rose’s eyebrows lift and her lips curve into an even more amused smile. She pokes one finger into Luisa’s side. “You _have_ thought about this.”

Luisa jumps and bats Rose’s finger away. “Slip of the tongue. It could be a boy, we could have a son, we could—”

“You _want_ one.”

“No. I didn’t say that, I didn’t—” And Luisa shakes her head again trying to make sense of things, and finally blurts out, “I don’t want to have a child who can’t meet their extended family. I don’t want a son or daughter who can’t meet Rafael and his kids. I don’t want them to be separated from their cousins just because…because….” And she can’t finish the sentence. She _won’t_. It’s an argument they’ve had to many times, and it isn’t fair for her to bring it up now.

Even if it _is_ relevant.

“I can’t make Rafael accept me the way you have.”

“I know.”

“And I don’t believe that it’s right for you to have to hold back on what you want because he won’t see me for anything other than what he believes me to be.”

“You’re a sociopath. What do you know about what’s _right_?”

Luisa says the words without think, and as soon as she says them, her eyes widen. A silence falls between them, broken only by the rotating palm fan and its occasional creak, because Luisa can’t think of anything to say to fix it.

“Nothing, apparently,” Rose says, finally, not looking up.

“Rose, that’s not—”

But Rose has already turned on one side, facing away from Luisa, curled up.

Luisa curls up next to her and presses a kiss to her freckled neck. “That’s not what I meant.”

“You say it – _imply it_ – too often for it to _not_ be what you mean.” Rose pulls away from Luisa’s touch. “Just…don’t.”

“Rose.”

“_Luisa._” Rose continues to pull farther away, trying to ignore her the same way she always did, but Luisa just moves closer against her until there’s nowhere left for Rose to go without potentially rolling off the bed. So she just sighs and turns back, blue eyes examining Luisa. “What?”

“I love you.” Luisa presses a kiss to the tip of Rose’s nose and smiles as the redhead scrunches her face. “Sociopath or not.”

“That doesn’t particularly make me _feel_ any better.”

“It should,” Luisa murmurs, “and if it doesn’t….” Her hand brushes across Rose’s smooth stomach again, stopping just between her breasts as she moves to straddle her. She doesn’t have to say it, but she does anyway. “I can think of something else that might.”

Rose just shakes her head. “Not right now.” She turns her head away, pressing her face sideways against her pillow.

Luisa pouts, but she knows better than to push it. She rolls off of Rose’s waist but lets her hand continue to rest on Rose’s stomach as she curls up next to her again, laying her head back on the other woman’s breast. “You really want a kid?” she asks. Her voice is soft now whispered, almost like the words are a secret. “With me?”

This causes Rose to turn back, to face her, to let her bright blue eyes meet Luisa’s dark hazel ones. She opens her mouth, as though to say it aloud, but seems to think better of it, instead pressing her lips together and finally slowly nodding, her curly, frizzy hair brushing against the top of Luisa’s head.

“Ok.” Luisa nods to herself before leaning one more against her lover’s chest. “So. Let’s…let’s have a kid.”

* * *

When their daughter is finally born, she is a healthy mass of curly, redhead joy, freckles brushed like stardust across her nose, and when their son is born in only the space of two heartbeats later, with dark hair plastered to the top of his head and even darker freckles barely sprinkled beneath his hazel eyes, they cannot help but hold their breath in awe. Twins – fraternal, no identical – and theirs.

_Theirs._

Not genetically. At first, they’d looked for a surrogate, not because Rose hadn’t wanted to carry but because Luisa couldn’t help but be worried that stretch marks, the potential scar of a c-section if she had trouble with the pregnancy, would be identifiers of Rose, and she didn’t want this, which seemed so selfish of her and so risky of Rose, to cause further complications down the road. But as they looked for a surrogate, Luisa became afraid, too, of the lengths Rose might go to when it came to making sure that their children were their own. She didn’t want the surrogate mother to be afraid of threats, of the death of her family if she changed her mind.

So they’d found a mother like Jane.

Well. Not _like Jane_, but in a similar situation – pregnant without intending to be but also not willing to abort the child for reasons of her own – and they’d agreed, the three of them, for Rose and Luisa to keep the child when it was born, whatever it ended up being. And when it ended up being twins, with all the complications that might entail, Luisa had leaped at the chance, her eyes brightly lit, and Rose hadn’t been able to deny her. When they’d talked about it later, just the two of them, curled up in bed together, Luisa making absolutely sure that this was what Rose wanted, Rose admitted that she, too, wanted both children.

_Theirs._

And that, somehow, miracle of miracles, they were born looking as they did, as though they were meant to be theirs all along?

It seemed like it was something straight out of a telenovela.


End file.
